Date: Sun, 15 Oct 2006 12:47:37 +0200 From: Erik Norgaard <norgaard@locolomo.org> To: Ted Mittelstaedt <tedm@toybox.placo.com> Cc: Beech Rintoul <freebsd@alaskaparadise.com>, freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Non English Spam Message-ID: <453211C9.8030102@locolomo.org> In-Reply-To: <001c01c6eff4$f77cd590$3c01a8c0@coolf89ea26645> References: <200610131712.46822.freebsd@alaskaparadise.com> <4530DA30.7060004@locolomo.org> <001c01c6eff4$f77cd590$3c01a8c0@coolf89ea26645>
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Ted Mittelstaedt wrote: >> I have noted however, that some subscribers to this list write english >> encoded in one of the above character sets, I don't know enough about >> the character set definition, but it seems that English characters are a >> subset of any character set? >> >> What is the recommended policy here? Should subscribers be advised to >> change character set when posting to the list? > > No. It's the responsibility of the person doing the filtering - in this > case you - > to exempt any known good e-mail sender from your filters. > You know damn well that legitimate mailing list mail comes from > > mx2.freebsd.org (mx2.freebsd.org [216.136.204.119]) > > it's right in the headers of the messages on the list. First: You know all too well that filtering based on "Received" header fields is not reliable - any decent spammer know how to forge that. Accepting mail from a particular host should be done even before the mail delivery starts. Second: If you know postfix, you also know that header filtering is independent of other checks, even the result of filtering on individual header lines are independent. So the ideal you mention is not an option until a complete public list of authorized mail servers is available and all mail relayed through these requires authentication. Or do you have the solution that does not imply accepting any of a myriad of character sets? I'd be happy to implement that, but I don't want to open my mail server to receive mail I have no means of reading and understanding just because it is RFC compliant. > You have no right to > force other people to conform to what you feel is acceptable formatting > of their message as long as they meet the SMTP rfc standards. That's > why we have RFC's. You you know perfectly well that content filtering is not based on the RFC's on SMTP but rather on the Internet Message Format and various RFC's on MIME - but I assume that you meant to refer to these. Basically what you say here is that spammers have every right to flood mail servers as long as they do so compliant with the RFC's? I don't force anyone to conform to any arbitrary standards that I decide upon, but I have every legitimate right to reject anything that doesn't conform to my arbitrary standards. Yet, it is somewhat implicit that this is an English language list, any one writing in a different language may be lucky to find someone who can respond in their language, but are just as often referred to one of the language specific lists - if their message is not simply ignored. So we do actually impose some arbitrary rule on subscribers, namely to write in English. Given that we find it reasonable to impose such a rule, then why is it unreasonable to impose that they should abstain from obscure non-English character sets? I was hoping to find a way that we can all get along, I find it kind of useless to waste my resources on mail written in languages that I have no means of interpreting. > If everyone did what your proposing then senders would have hundreds > of different rules they would have to follow, over and above the normal > RFCs. Well, in real life as well as on-line we have thousands of rules and customs, implicit or written, on communication and gestures. There are best practices on how to communicate in e-mail and on mailling lists, usage of smileys and other types of mood-expression, and proclaimed best practices on how to quote. You regularly see people complaining about top posting. Then, line wrapping, or people who don't delete the trailing message part that they don't reply to etc. I don't see a recommendation on character sets as much different. Cheers, Erik -- Ph: +34.666334818 web: http://www.locolomo.org X.509 Certificate: http://www.locolomo.org/crt/8D03551FFCE04F0C.crt Key ID: 69:79:B8:2C:E3:8F:E7:BE:5D:C3:C3:B1:74:62:B8:3F:9F:1F:69:B9
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